I played a single battle in Jeann D’Arc finally, it’s aight
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I enjoy how transparently collusive Microsoft Rewards are…type anything into Bing 50 times we’ll give you $10 of xbox money a month.
i’ll keep the Bing team hired and you keep me paid, so be it
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It’s gotta be the best classic JRPG. I have played the first 10-15 hours so many times now
11 posts were merged into an existing topic: semi-annual Final Fantasy binge/purge
Its weird that I like tactics rpgs because I like the idea of inhabiting a bunch of little guys and getting to position them brings more “life” into them rather than the party members just standing in a row during an RPG battle. What I don’t like is how each one takes forever to do! They are whole battles that take like 15 or 30 minutes! Theres also so much more strategy that goes into them because there’s positional, movement, and range stats to factor into combat. Maybe if I just liked that more… then again I tend to get into tactics rpgs for…the story! why can’t I just watch an anime instead of playing an 80 hour game??? the mind reels
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this is why the isometric dioramas add so much to them – Matsuno was on this really early on and it’s barely improvable from there
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I’m pretty sure a good third of the reason tactics RPGs take forever is all the scrolling the screen back and forth. It’s repeated fine-grained manipulation followed by a moment to reorient yourself, and it adds up to a huge waste of time.
IMO the only ones they should be making are portable minidiaromas like Into the Breach or console/desktop ones that have maps just small enough to entirely fit on the gigantic high-res screens we have nowadays.
I guess room-based ones like Invisible Inc might be an OK compromise too. Anyway, above all I would say that having move or target distances larger than one screen width is bad game design
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hell let loose has a free weekend on steam who wants to gas it up and burn it down with me (get picked off repeatedly by enemies you can’t even see)
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Once you play Ring of Red that’s down right brisk.
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I’ve put a few more hours into Death’s Door and I’m about 2/3 of the way through the game. It’s continued to be solid. I don’t necessarily think anyone needs to rush out and play it, but if you’re really itching for a Zelda kinda game with tougher combat, well, there’s this one.
It has some nice touches. A few charming characters that provide some levity in what would otherwise be a pretty straight-faced action romp.
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Wow the Akira story in Live A Live features some Yoko Shimomura Traverse Town ass saxophone and it’s hilarious how I knew who it was because of that sound.
Edit: fixed. Stupid phone typing.
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I wasn’t gonna pay full price for this because I never tend to actually want to play a whole romancing saga or a Moon or an HD-2D whatever these days, the switch remake localization boom is lost on me, I would’ve played this with an IPS patch on ZSNES or not at all, but I gotta say I get a real good feeling off the demo for this one
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Shimomura
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having had a few days to reflect upon stray, it reminds me most of beyond good & evil. just in terms of tone, pacing, and its cavalier use of whatever game mechanic suits itself at the given moment. and I mean, it’s made by french developers. qed imo
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Finished Forgotten City had a great time with it. Recommended if you want a real American Schooling on Roman lifestyles.
Played through UMUrangi Generation in one session. Kind of lukewarm on the game but glad it exists. Kyouei Toshii did what it did better. And lofi-beats to end the world to didn’t ever hit with me (so much that I switched out the soundtrack for spotify in the middle.)
I’d probably buy a copy of Sable or Umurangi if someone here asked, for my shame playing them on Game Pass with no effort and my one dollar.
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Ah that helps me understand it, thank you!
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This maybe isn’t a recommendation for you, since it just seems like it wasn’t your thing, but for anyone reading (or for your later reconsideration!): the Macro DLC really brings that game to an emotional climax in a way that the ending to the original kind of side-steps doing, and not to great success. I love Umurangi Generation because of Macro, I think.
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Trying to figure out how to coherently talk about Spirits Abyss, which is my favorite roguelite in a while but doesn’t do anything particularly unique.
So it’s Spelunky through the lens of someone who only had a Zed Ex Speccy as a child. It’s extremely british, is what I’m saying, specifically in the way it uses words.
This is the game that added a “diapey wiapey for your poopy woopies” because someone made fun of the way the game uses baby talk constantly (spoilers you’re a child thrown into a pit to go kill a demon so everyone baby talks to you) but it also has shit like the above AND below
it’s bizarre.
Anyway I despise Spelunky for some reason (couldn’t tell you why, I just find it about as interesting as watching paint dry while someone punches me in the face) but I’m loving this game. I think part of it is that instead of having one big dungeon that has multiple secrets, it splits the game up into a bunch of smaller modes. Specifically, the game starts off with just a 4 level dungeon which can be beaten in less than 5 minutes once you know what the hell is going on.
And that’s nice! I haven’t played many roguelites recently where I can actually, like, accomplish shit.
In fact, the game seems to be fully dedicated to the “wide not deep” philosophy - there are tons of game modes, and each character class has its own high score board, so it’s easy to find some form of victory if you want it.
But it also features tons of bizarre unlockable shit - I’ve played for 4.7 hours and I’ve still got mostly question marks on the main menu. I respect this!!
I also really dig the music - it’s extremely Speccy in that the mood of the music absolutely does not match the mood of the game. It’s way too cheerful! I’m into it.
But yeah, I dunno, this game isn’t deep or anything but between the aesthetic and like, actually-possible difficulty, I’m really into it.
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Riven might just be a cool adventure in an alien world when you first encounter it, but its actually very depressingly human in a way most games don’t really achieve. This aspect of the game completely passed me by as a kid. Much of my recent experience playing it now is marvelling how a person can have such a different perspective as a child versus as an adult, sans Žižek’s sunglasses. Anyway. Machines and locations that younger me just thought were weird are clearly a sinister attempt to create a cult. It’s excellent.
Thoughts dump on this 25 year old game
It’s interesting to unpick when exactly Gehn started influencing the culture of Riven. The nature of the art of linking books has some insidious implications for cosmogenesis/cultural imprinting. Perhaps the Rivenese originally built their houses so high due to tidal flooding. Is it in the fear of the wahrks? Did this fear start with Gehn or was it only moulded by him? Later these questions are highlighted by the adherence to the idealised numerology of 5 in all things, and romanticising the D’Ni technology/heritage. You can see this in subtle ways. The 4 islands: technically 5 although Gehn’s holding process seemed to completely lose one of them from a neat penta-grouping - perversely, to Gehn’s benefit. The central dome puzzle has 6 firemarbles in accordance with a D’Ni blueprint even though only 5 are used. The Rivenese clearly have a similar reverence for 5 and I like that it’s ambiguous as to whether Gehn just builds in this arbitrary numeric ontology into the world or if it’s all just apophenia. The Moiety may even simply emulate Gehn through mockery. The whole thing is messy in such a compelling way despite the stark sterility of individual puzzle interactions.
The artifice of the game-ness of Riven is handled in really organic ways and I think my biggest takeaway is the exactness that the game’s interactions allow. You see and can touch only what is significant to touch. What you would bother investigating were you really there. In a fully rendered realtime 3D environment, the collision meshes of everything promise that everything can at the very least be touched, if not interacted with in a systemic or contextual manner. The larger these worlds get, the more hollow each encounter becomes to the point that there isn’t really a world illusion anymore - only a series of things. Riven has precisely enough interactions and they’re all clearly signposted within a concise world of meaning. Every other non-interactive thing is something you wouldn’t bother interacting with otherwise so you don’t and can’t. The ‘set-dressing’ really becomes much denser in its purpose as you imagine how the world is or was or could be. Not a single interaction is wasted but because a madman has taken control of 4/5ths of the world’s landmass to make a book factory the tool-like nature of Riven’s architecture is justified. We can only briefly persist with interactions with the Rivenese, why would we bother these people further given their understanding of the situation and the language barrier? Not to mention the possible punishment in place for interacting with us.
All that is important is rendered clearly in Riven.
It was something to complete the journey: from sitting with my dad and sister in the glow of an early iMac, to my post-covid home office where I’ve completed it alone.
I still have no idea what this thing is other than it must be some fish cooking. The shape’s indistinctiveness has always stuck with me and as a child I misguidedly feared that it might be the foot of someone standing in the kiln.
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I need to play myst and riven. my main memory of riven is my grandpa giving me his copy and saying that grandma got mad at him for playing it for like 3 days straight lmao
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